Bright Young Things Part 12

Charlie shrugged. "Maybe because you're my sister? Who cares, just be nice to her."

"I'll be nice to her because she's my friend," Cordelia replied sharply. "Not because of your say-so."

"Don't you get difficult, too. You're a Grey, after all, and Greys have to stick together."

"But the other night you accused me of-"

"I'm sorry I said that." When Charlie exhaled, he did so with the whole force of his big body. There was something about that sigh-so heavy with responsibility-that made it difficult for her to go on regarding him as a mere obstacle. "I was wrong to say that, especially to the only sister I've got."

They climbed the grand marble steps toward the house, and in a moment she glimpsed what Astrid had said about him the other night-that he cared above all about the family. Having spent her entire life as a kind of changeling, she couldn't help but like him a little for this characteristic and want to be taken in under his protective wing.

"All right, but just today," she said, her tone turning light. "I can't make any promises for tomorrow."

Giving her a sidelong glance, Charlie opened the door so that she could pa.s.s. Inside was dim-there was only the natural light coming in through the windows, plus the walls were paneled with dark wood. Cordelia stepped forward, into the hall; the house seemed rather cold to her for a moment, and she realized that she hadn't even spoken to Darius since last night at dinner, when she had been so silent and awkward. Of course, she felt her father's presence constantly-in the attention of his staff and in the continual arrival of clothes and shoes and hats, and especially since her punishment. But the absence of his face all morning struck her at that moment and made her feel a little sad.

"Charlie-"

Both Grey siblings looked up at the sound, although Elias Jones, wearing a trim, unflashy black suit, barely appeared to register Cordelia's presence as he emerged from the shadows. Charlie stepped toward him, and the older man began to whisper in his ear. Her brother's face grew serious again, and he nodded, listening until Jones finished what he had to say.

"Thanks," Charlie said. Then he turned his back on both Jones and his sister and bounded up the stairs.

After clearing his throat, Jones informed her, "A few more packages arrived from the city-your father asked that I put them in your suite."

By the time Cordelia managed to say "thank you," Jones had turned and headed outside. She could hear his footfalls scattering gravel, and also the creaking of boards under heavy footsteps above. Craning her neck, she looked up the three stories, to the carved ceiling and the great chandelier, which remained off during the daytime.

"Charlie!" she cried.

A few seconds pa.s.sed, and then his head appeared over the banister. "You need something?" he said eventually.

"No ..." She s.h.i.+fted on her feet. "I just wanted to tell you-I didn't know who Thom was when I agreed to go out with him. I wouldn't have, if I'd known."

There was another pause, but then Charlie smiled, wide enough that she could see it, even way below him on the ground floor. His head disappeared, and then she heard his steps as he began to descend the stairs. By the time he had rounded the final flight and stood facing her on the second-to-last step, his smile had gone away, but there was a new genial quality as he paused to appraise her.

"Thank you for that."

"It's not a favor." She held his gaze, her face neutral, her back straight. "That's just who I am."

"Even better," Charlie chuckled. "I never trust favors, anyway, until they've been given."

"Me neither."

An awkward lingering ensued, during which Charlie appeared unsure whether to return upstairs or not. Cordelia, who had nothing much to do, remained steadily in place.

"No good being cooped up, is it?" Charlie said eventually.

Cordelia gave a silent shake of her head.

"If I got you out of here, do you think you could persuade Astrid to meet you?"

Her eyes shone, and her blood quickened. That sounded like the most fun she'd had in days. She looked around, but there was no one watching them, and then she gave a swift nod.

"Come on," Charlie replied with a grin.

They began to walk in the same direction that Cordelia had gone during her first moments in Dogwood-down the hall, toward the kitchen, which she now saw was a large s.p.a.ce, crowded with ranges under iron hoods, high, worn tables, and hanging copper pots. A heavy man wearing an ap.r.o.n, his multiple chins rising out of a collared s.h.i.+rt, stood at the stovetop.

"Charlie!" the man exclaimed, shaking a saute pan from which rose the rich smell of mushrooms cooking in b.u.t.ter. It was obvious, the way he said the name, that he had known Charlie as a child.

"Cordelia, this is Len-he's been with Dad since the beginning."

"So you're the young lady," the big man said, nodding as he a.s.sessed her.

Cordelia answered with a slight nod. "You've been cooking all my meals, haven't you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She smiled, but before she could thank him, Charlie asked Len if he could pack them a picnic lunch for an afternoon on the grounds.

"You still eating like three grown men, kid?" Len asked, and Charlie nodded almost bashfully.

They waited while he packed it for them. n.o.body said very much, and Cordelia couldn't help but glimpse something horrible and strange near his feet: He wore one normal black polished shoe, but his other pant leg appeared to hang around a wooden post.

"Charlie," Cordelia whispered, once their lunch had been finished and they were crossing through the formal dining room. "What was wrong with that man's leg?"

To her surprise, Charlie chuckled. "His leg? He lost it."

A wave of dread pa.s.sed over her as she tried to comprehend a thing like that. She had to reach down and press her palms against the fronts of her thighs, just to experience the relief that she was all there. "But how?" how?" Cordelia pursued. Cordelia pursued.

"Why else do you think a man his size would be in the kitchen? He's big; Dad says he used to be good muscle." Charlie shrugged. "Anyway, it was a long time ago now, back in the early days, when they were just starting to enforce Prohibition. Territories hadn't been worked out yet. And Dad, Len, some others, they had a gang-they delivered liquor-and one night a rival gang challenged Dad, tried to edge in on his customers. Dad took a bullet, and Len got run over. Pulverized his leg. They both ended up in St. Vincent's-the doc said he was just lucky he lived."

"Oh," Cordelia said in a very small voice.

"Like I said, long time ago," Charlie went on matter-of-factly as they entered the ballroom. "We don't eat much in that dining room," he commented. "Only since you been here-it's funny, I guess Dad wants to impress you."

"Why funny?" Cordelia demanded.

"Don't take it personal-it's only that you've spent all your life in Ohio, and it seems like he worries a lot more about impressing you than some of the ladies he brings back here-I mean, real ladies, grew up on Fifth Avenue and have been to Paris and own poodles and all that. Ladies like Astrid. But it makes sense he'd want you to have the best ... you're his blood."

Cordelia smiled at the thought that her father cared so much about treating her well. "Dad has a lot of girlfriends, huh?" she asked.

"Yeah, well." They had nearly crossed the gleaming dance floor, and Charlie opened the door on the far end, and paused to allow Cordelia to pa.s.s into the library before him. "That's why he redid the Calla Lily Suite. There was this chorus girl, Mona Alexander-they were engaged for a while. But she was a bad drinker, and eventually Dad decided she was the wrong element. I think that's the only room in the house that has really new furniture, actually. Furniture he bought himself, I mean."

Cordelia nodded and glanced up at the plasterwork angels on the ceiling and the fine chandelier that dangled in the center, wondering where Mona Alexander was now, and whether or not Darius had thought of f.a.n.n.y Larson when he proposed to the chorus girl.

"Never mind all that," Charlie said as the siblings continued into the shady library. It had an even more solemn air in the daytime, and the ferns seemed overgrown, almost as though they had been there a hundred years. Charlie stepped over the Persian carpets toward the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that lined the south wall. He studied the spines for a minute, searching for something.

More words had been exchanged between them that afternoon than over the entire week, and for the first time she was really curious about her brother. "It must have been pretty nice, growing up like this," she mused.

"Like this?" Charlie gave a short snort. "Wish I had. Dad bought this place in '24. Year before that, he rented a beach place in Whitewood-that's east along the sound-not as high-cla.s.s, if you know what I mean. Before that, it was one apartment to another in the city."

"Oh?" It was difficult for Cordelia to picture Charlie like that, without the chauffeur and entourage and fine clothes.

"It seems like another life. It was. Prohibition made made Dad-he was pretty small-time before that, though don't tell anybody I said so." Dad-he was pretty small-time before that, though don't tell anybody I said so."

"Have you always been part of his ... whatever it is he does?" Cordelia asked.

"Ever since I could talk-first racket I ran was as the distraction for Dad's pick-pocketing schemes. I'd act lost in a crowded place, and some broad would make a big fuss about me, and meanwhile Dad would be slipping billfolds out of pockets ..."

This sounded like a good adventure to Cordelia, but she couldn't be certain if Charlie thought so, too, because he turned his face away from her and changed the subject.

"What I'm about to show you?" he said. "You can't tell anybody about it."

"One thing to know about me, Charlie Grey: I can keep a secret."

His eyes went to her, and he put on a half smile. "I'll bet you can," he replied, and he placed his hand against a red book and pushed.

There was a groaning mechanical noise, and then with a whoosh the wall began to rotate in a slow circle. Cordelia's mouth opened in surprise as the wall of books disappeared and another tableau came into view. With a click the movement ceased, and the shelves had become a bar of polished wood, with a semicircle mirror behind a collection of bottles holding seemingly every kind of spirit, and a large case stocked with gla.s.ses of various shapes.

"Very impressive! But I thought you were going to get me out of here?"

A little light caught in one of Charlie's eyes, but they were otherwise dark and inscrutable as he watched her. "You really can keep a secret? Only Dad's inner circle knows about this. He'd go crazy on me if he knew I was showing it ..."

"I already told you I could!" she exclaimed.

"Right. Well, truth is, this is really just a false front for a kind of pa.s.sageway."

Taking a breath, Cordelia a.s.sessed her brother. "A pa.s.sageway to where?"

His eyes glinted again, and he reached behind the bottles on the bar to press another b.u.t.ton. The contraption groaned, but this time the bar rotated only halfway, so that a s.p.a.ce was left open between the real wall and the false one. Cordelia stepped forward and saw a stairwell leading down into the darkness.

"Follow me," he urged her. They walked down a curving flight of stairs dimly illuminated by the natural light coming through the slits in the ceiling. The air was cool in the darkness, especially as they traveled farther down under the ground. By the time they reached the bottom, it was almost completely black. Charlie searched for something, and in a moment he had found a switch, and the light of a single dangling bulb made their surroundings visible.

They were standing on a dirt floor in a cavernous s.p.a.ce, just beside a door secured with a great padlock, and beyond that a pa.s.sageway branched right and left. The s.p.a.ce underneath Dogwood was nothing much to look at, but Cordelia felt that vague excitement that comes from being someplace so secret.

"That's the storeroom." Charlie waved his hand toward the padlocked door. "There are others, of course, but that's the one on the property."

"Where do those lead?" Cordelia pointed down the two pa.s.sageways.

"One goes to the garage, so that deliveries can be brought in underground. Doesn't happen very often-like I said, only a few of Dad's men know about this place, and we want to keep it that way. The other goes to the bay."

"To the bay?" The smell of earth surrounded her, and she folded her arms around her torso and s.h.i.+vered. "What for?"

"Oh, lots of reasons. In case the roads are blocked or being watched, and we need to get the goods in or out another way ... Sometimes Dad says the feds are watching or waiting around the bend, and he doesn't want them to know he's leaving ... or if there's a raid someday, this'll be the escape route, I guess."

"Where does it end?" Cordelia asked, taking a step in the direction of the bay pa.s.sageway.

"Little rundown pier by a fisherman's shack-it's a good half mile of tunnel to get there."

For a moment, Cordelia thought she caught a faint whiff of sea air, and her pulse quickened with the idea of escape.

"You ready?" Charlie said, a touch of urgency heightening his voice.

Their eyes met, both sets glinting with mischief, and then they struck out, walking in easy silence. For the first time, Cordelia began to feel what it was to have a sibling-even if he was a half sibling-and having been placed in Charlie's charge began to seem a little less of a nuisance. If he was an irritation, then he was the kind of irritation one is comforted by and rather likes having around.

"How do you know the fisherman won't tell?" she asked as the darkened tunnel came to an end at a flight of old wooden stairs that led to a trapdoor.

"Old man Ostrander? He'd never-Dad did him a big favor once. He's more loyal to the Greys than he is to his own people. Plus, he drinks for free, and that's the most important thing to him."

He pushed open the heavy door and they came out on a rundown pier. Blinking in the bright light and breathing in the salty bay air, they couldn't help but shoot each other conspiratorial grins. The day was gorgeous, and they paused for a moment to share in the exhilaration of finally being free.

18

THE SOUND OF PEBBLES AGAINST GLa.s.s AWAKENED Astrid from an anxious slumber. At first she hoped whoever it was would just go away, but when the barrage of pebbles continued, she cracked an eye and saw that she had fallen asleep on a daybed on the far side of her bedroom and that she was still wearing her pale peach silk evening frock from the night before. It was sleeveless, in a boyish cut, with a scalloped pattern of beads on the gauzy overdress, and when she'd put it on last night, she'd thought how much Charlie would have admired her in it. One high-heeled shoe was half on her right foot, and the other lay across the room, near the undisturbed coverlet she ordinarily slept under. She pushed herself up enough to shove open the leaded windowpane.

"What?" she called irritably.

"Astrid, it's me!"

At the sound of Cordelia's voice, she scrambled to her feet and popped her head out the window. The air outside was unbearably fresh. "Oh, thank G.o.d! I've missed missed you," she caroled. Down below, on the drive, stood her new best friend in a blindingly white dress. Astrid pushed her piles of blond hair out of her face and beamed. you," she caroled. Down below, on the drive, stood her new best friend in a blindingly white dress. Astrid pushed her piles of blond hair out of her face and beamed.

Cordelia waved and smiled and stepped out of the shadow of an oak tree. "I've missed you, too!"

"How did you ever escape Dogwood?" As soon as she said it, her happiness flagged. There was no way Cordelia had escaped alone. Plus, the place where she was standing was too far for a girl's arm-Charlie was with her, hiding behind the tree trunk, probably. Cordelia cleared her throat and stepped forward, but before she could answer, Astrid pulled back and slammed the window shut. She threw herself down on the daybed, put a silky pillow over her face, and told herself to go back to sleep as quickly as possible. But her heart kept ticking, almost audibly, and pretty soon she realized that she wasn't going to have any peace. For a whole day she had been very good and not returned any of Charlie's calls and not even thought about him any more than was necessary. She still hated him for what he might have done-for all the ugly jealousy he'd made her feel-and yet she knew she wouldn't be able to stand it if he left before she caught at least a glimpse of him.

With as much cool hauteur as she could manage, she removed the pillow from her face, retrieved her wayward shoe, and made her way down to the main foyer. By the time she cracked the heavy front door, Charlie was visible. He wore a white T-s.h.i.+rt tucked in to brown trousers and carried a paper sack in one arm. His hair had less grease in it than usual and so appeared fairer and thicker; it was parted down the middle and rose up in two hills on either side. Astrid crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the door frame until they noticed her. For a moment, it seemed as though Charlie was going to rush at Astrid, but his sister put a hand up to his chest to stop him. Then Cordelia approached the house alone.

"I'm glad to see you you-but what is he he doing here?" Astrid demanded. doing here?" Astrid demanded.

Cordelia smiled apologetically. "I know that earring looks bad-but if you could only see how he misses you. All morning he begged me to see if I couldn't get you to take his call. He said he doesn't know what he's done to deserve your anger-"

"And you believe him?"

Cordelia turned and glanced over her shoulder. Charlie was watching, hands stuffed in pockets, his big frame inclined toward the girls as though it was all he could do to keep himself put. "I don't know. What I do know is, it's a beautiful day, and we're finally free, and it won't be any fun without you, and we have three egg sandwiches, and only two of us to eat them."

Astrid knew the thing to do was to put her nose in the air and say she'd love to if her afternoon weren't so packed. But seeing Charlie walk away now would be agony, and before she could stop herself, she'd stepped forward onto the drive. Her heart was still tight as a fist-but at least now he would get to see her in the peach dress.

"All right, Charlie Grey!" she called defiantly. "You can have me for the afternoon if you dare."

Though the day was utterly cloudless, Astrid's face was occasionally made cold by the currents created by various flying contraptions zooming up and landing on Everly Field, in Queens. She reclined like a princess on the checkered picnic cloth, with her head rested against Charlie's hip. A few feet away Cordelia sat with her long legs folded under, her hair tied back in a loose bun, watching the pilots pop the balloons that occasionally rose from the crowd and high into the vast blue arc above the enormous green field. The whole day had such charm, Astrid thought; she was happy to be here, watching the crowds at the airfield, instead of lonely at home and wondering what her boyfriend was doing without her.

"Charlie, why haven't you ever taken me up in an airplane?" Astrid demanded, turning her remaining half sandwich in her hands, contemplating the best place to bite into the white bread. After an absence of some days, he looked particularly handsome to her, and she was struggling to keep part of her heart angry at him. But being difficult was a talent she'd mastered at a young age, and she was managing to be difficult with Charlie now, even if he was so broad and strong. "It's only five dollars a person, and they take you all around."